Working with beta software

- In this chapter, I gave you a high level introductionto the ASP.NET 5 frameworkand set some expectations on howto get the most out of this course.There is one detail that I left out, however,the videos that you're about to watchwere created and recorded using a pre-release versionof ASP.NET 5, Beta4 to be exact.What's more, we're not going to seethe final release version of the frameworkknown as the Release to Manufacturingor RTM version until early in 2016.

I know this because the ASP.NET teamis nice enough to say so in the ASP.NET 5 Roadmapthat they keep up to date on their GitHub repositorywhich you can access here.According to the roadmap,the team plans to release several morebeta versions between nowand the final RTM version in 2016.In other words, even though the codethat I'll be showing in this courseworked fine when I recorded the videos,by the time you watch this course,it'll already be out of date.This means that you will almost certainlyrun into situations where things don't workexactly as I've described them.

However, even though many of the detailscan and will change between the timeof this recording and the final release of the framework,the concepts that I'll be showingsuch as middleware, controllers, views,and web APIs will almost certainlyremain exactly the same.So don't be afraid to invest the timeto learn the beta versions of the framework.It will be time well spentjust as long as you keep a few things in mind.First off, even though I'm about to tell youin the next video that all you needto install is Visual Studio 2015,during this pre-release stage,you will probably also be promptedto install additional versions of the .NET Runtimethat support the version of the frameworkthat you're using.

For example, when opening up the Exercise Filesfor this course, you'll probably be promptedto install the Beta4 version of the Runtime.When this happens, go ahead and say yesto install the Runtime.You may also need to installthe updated web tools for Visual Studio.I used this link to download the tools; however,by the time you watch thisthere will probably be a newer version of the toolsso it's probably best for youto do a Google search for Visual Studio Web Tools 2015and install whatever comes up from Microsoft.

Second, and perhaps most importantly,if you're going to follow alongand write the code that I write in this course,pay very close attention to the version numbersthat I use when I reference librariesin the project.json file.These version numbers indicatewhich Beta version of the framework you're using.In all of the videos in this course,I will refer to library versions that end in -beta4which is the latest version of the frameworkas of the time of this recording.However, when you attempt to type the library names in,Visual Studio will give you the optionto reference one of the later versionsof these libraries such as Beta6,or Beta7, or Beta8.

When this happens, always be sureto choose the Beta4 version of the libraryexactly as I do in the video.If you install these additional toolsand pay close attention to these library versions,the code that I write in this courseshould work just fine even thoughit is an older beta version.Once you've gotten through the whole courseand learned how to build applicationswith the Beta4 version of the framework,you'll inevitably run into another issue.Learning to write applicationswith the Beta4 version of the framework is greatexcept for the fact that you'll probably also wantto keep up with newer versions of the frameworkas they're released even if they're notwhat I show in these videos.

In fact, by the time this course is even published,Visual Studio will default to the Beta6 releasewhen I show you how to createa new project in the next chapter.Each new Beta release will inevitably changesomething in the frameworkwhich will mean that some of the codeI show in these videos may not even work anymore,and obviously I don't knowwhat those changes are going to beto tell you what to look for right now.But the biggest problem is that it's not possiblefor me to re-record this entire coursefor each new Beta release.

Even still, I think it's a great ideafor you to keep up with the latest versionsof the framework as they come out.And in order to help you with thatwithout re-recording the whole course,I'll be maintaining two sets of the Exercise Filesthat I introduced earlier in this chapter.The first set of Exercise Files will contain codewritten against the Beta4 version of the framework.This code matches exactly what you will seeme type in the videos throughout the course.The second set of Exercise Files will containthe same code that I write in this course,but I'll continue to update itwith each new version of the ASP.NET 5 frameworkas it's released.

That means that there will bea different set of Exercise Filesfor each Beta release that comes outafter this course is published.Also note that I will only be updatingthe final application in this updated set of filesso they will not be available on a video-by-video basis.This shouldn't be too much of a problemfor you though since the updated codeshould still contain the same filethat you're having a problem with.Just as I mentioned in the Using Exercise Files video,both sets of Exercise Files will be available in two places.

First, you'll be able to download themfrom the Lynda.com website.Second, you'll also be able to viewand download the files from the GitHub repositoryfor this course located at this address.I'll keep the master branch of this repositoryup-to-date with the latest Beta versionso if you choose to clone the repository,you'll be downloading the latest version.I'll also create a branch for each beta version as wellso that if I've updated the master branchto say Beta8 and you want to see the code for Beta6,simply select the Beta6 branchfrom the branch drop-down to go back in timeand see the code that is compatiblewith that Beta6 release.

In addition to fixing the code for each version,I will also update the ReadMe filethat appears on the repository home pagewith Release Notes that describe exactlywhat changes I had to makewhen upgrading from beta version to beta version.So when you run into a situationwhere the code that I tell you to writein one of these videos doesn't workfor you using the latest version,you can always check the Release Notesand the updated source codeto see how that code had to be changed.I know that dealing with pre-release code can be painful,but these two tools should help reducethe pain in learning what has changedbetween each new beta version that gets released.

And rest assured that when the RTM versionof ASP.NET 5 is finally released,I will not only be updating the Exercise Files,but also re-recording the entire courseas quickly as possible.And once that's done, you won't haveto deal with any of these issues again.So now that you know all of this,please feel free to continue onwith the rest of the course knowing thateven if some things do change,you will be among the first folks in the worldthat are able to get up and running with ASP.NET 5.

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Released

9/2/2015

ASP.NET 5, Microsoft's latest web development framework, includes an optimized developer experience, better performing runtime, and cross-platform support for Windows, Mac, and Linux. With all this change, many developers find they could use a refresher. In this course, Jess Chadwick introduces the basics to get you up and running with ASP.NET 5, and creating and deploying your own professional quality applications. He explores setup and installation, working with the ASP.NET MVC 6 framework, and the techniques you need to manage data, reuse code, construct web APIs, and secure your new applications. After you've built your application, Jess will show you how to deploy it to both IIS server and Microsoft Azure.

Topics include:

Understanding ASP.NET 5's new request processing pipeline

Downloading client-side libraries using Grunt and Bower in Visual Studio